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This article addresses the meaning of the citizenship clauses of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment by augmenting the historical record relevant to those clauses. It argues that the key to understanding their meaning lies in the nineteenth century concept of allegiance, the central concept in the international law of citizenship and subjecthood in the nineteenth century. International law, diplomatic history, and international conflict centered around that concept, reveal complexities not fully explored in the previous scholarly literature on the citizenship clauses. Conflicting national claims to the allegiance of subjects and citizens and to the duties they owed to sovereigns caused, in part, the War of 1812. They almost led the U.S. to war with Austria in 1853, and they contributed to tensions with other German states. They flared up again with Great Britain in conflicts over conscription by the United States of British subjects in 1862, and in the Fenian conflicts of 1866. Conflict arose over the extent to which sovereigns whose subjects emigrated to the United States retained jurisdiction over those emigrants based on allegiance to their native sovereigns. This, to which I refer as the jurisdiction arising from allegiance, differed from and to some extent clashed with territorial jurisdiction. It was recognized as a matter of international law as an extraterritorial jurisdiction grounded in the relationship between the subject and the subject's original sovereign. It was vastly more extensive and expansive than its enervated twenty-first century descendant, and so, in a seeming paradox, has remained generally invisible to the modern eye. To understand it is to gain important insights into the meanings underlying both the Act and the Amendment. The citizenship clauses of the Act and the Amendment offered opportunities to relieve this international tension, even while addressing their principal purpose of making citizens of the freedmen. The congressional debates over the Act and Amendment lapsed into incoherence because one group of legislators discussed the proposed Amendment as if the word 'jurisdiction' therein meant the jurisdiction arising from allegiance. That suggests that they intended to exclude from birthright citizenship the children of aliens, of persons who owed allegiance to some other sovereign at the time of the child's birth in the United States. Their opponents discussed the proposed Amendment as if the word 'jurisdiction' meant only territorial jurisdiction. That meant that anyone born within the United States would be a citizen by birthright, with only the most trivial exceptions, unless excluded explicitly. The greater weight of language and history favors the conclusion that the word "jurisdiction" in the Fourteenth Amendment was predominantly understood to mean the jurisdiction arising from allegiance. The weight of the evidence is not overwhelming, however, and the disposition of enormously important modern issues on the basis of that weight, without further research, might well be ill-advised.

AbstractThe provision of financial services through mobile phones is a powerful tool to foster financial inclusion, and thus economic growth, in developing countries. However, it raises important regulatory issues. Given the vulnerability of most potential customers of these services, the protection of customer funds is important. In common law countries, trust accounts are an effective response to these concerns. In civil law jurisdictions however, in the absence of trusts, protection of customer funds is more difficult. This paper identifies the theoretical and practical problems that regulators in civil law jurisdictions might face when trying to protect customer funds and explores how fiduciary contracts, mandate contracts and direct regulation might be used to achieve this goal. It offers a series of practical recommendations for policymakers in developing countries that provide a range of regulatory options that combine private law and regulation.

Subject matter of private international law / Xiaohong Liu, Xin Cai -- Sources of law / Xin Cai -- History of private international law / Xin Cai -- Classification / Xin Cai -- Preliminary question / Xin Cai -- Dépeçage / Xin Cai -- Renvoi / Xin Cai -- Point of contact / Xin Cai -- Ascertainment of foreign law / Xin Cai -- Public order, mandatory rules and evasion of law / Xin Cai -- Jurisdiction in personam / Jianping Shi and Zijun Zhai -- Jurisdiction in shipping claims / Jianping Shi and Zijun Zhai -- Immunities from jurisdiction / Jianping Shi and Zijun Zhai -- Law of obligations / Qingkun Xu -- Law of property / Lin Jia, Qingxuan Wu, Zhengyi Zhang -- Jurisdiction and applicable law in matters of intellectual property in China / Yang Cao -- Family law / Zhengyi Zhang, Jingning Zhang -- Law of corporations and insolvency / Xiaolin Li -- Competition law / Maozhong Ding, Dan Wang -- Recognition / Zhengyi Zhang, Zhen Zhang -- Enforcement of judgments / Zhengyi Zhang -- Interregional judicial assistance / Jun Chen -- International commercial arbitration / Shuo Feng -- Investment treaty arbitration / Junrong Song, Min Han -- China's role in the work of international organisations / Zhengyi Zhang, Yannan Liu -- The belt and road initiative and Chinese private international law / Zhengyi Zhang -- The future of private international law / Guojian XU, Zhengyi Zhang.

The Restatement of the Law (Fourth): The Foreign Relations Law of the United States is a monumental work, which, just like the Restatement (Third), may prove influential abroad. This also applies to its restatement of the law of jurisdiction. The clarity of the relevant chapters on jurisdiction, including the reporters' notes, is admirable. Comparing the Restatement (Third) to the Restatement (Fourth), it is striking that the latter places greater emphasis on US law-based jurisdictional limitations. The relevance of the customary international law of jurisdiction has correspondingly diminished, especially in regard to jurisdiction to prescribe and adjudicate. This commentary critiques this shift towards jurisdictional 'parochialism'. It singles out (i) the drafters' characterization of the principle of jurisdictional reasonableness as a principle of US statutory interpretation (prescriptive comity) rather than a customary international law norm limiting prescriptive jurisdiction and (ii) the drafters' view that the exercise of adjudicative jurisdiction is not constrained by customary international law.